


bedrock, deadlock

by sasuskies



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24523369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasuskies/pseuds/sasuskies
Summary: Naruto and Sasuke die. Sakura is left to pick up the pieces.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44





	bedrock, deadlock

**Author's Note:**

> i made this a couple of years back, i deleted it, revamped, and here it is again.

The Konoha streets are bustling, tidal in its colors, stark against the blue sky and the amber mountain. She sees the village in its glory, the sounds and the scents weaving through each other, painting it a distinct sense of home. It is what young children will know, it is what they will come back to, it is what they will recognize as Konoha, idyllic and warm. It will bring a sense of comfort. It is something intractable, innate in their genetic coding. Konoha is warm. This is an immovable fact.

Sakura, when asked, will answer the same. She will tell you she sees red rooftops and flaxen streets, green paint in the west and orange in the east. She will tell you the weather is nice because it always is. She will tell you the breeze smells strongly of grass and rain from the night before. 

She will tell you that birdsong can always be heard in the cemetery. They will sing (they don’t stop singing) and she will wonder, without fail, if they are there to taunt the people who mourn the dead.

Konoha is warm but the gravestones always feel cool beneath her fingers. 

See, Shikamaru always says to separate facts from feelings during missions, so Sakura takes his advice and does just that.

It’s been five years, three months, and twenty-one days since the end of the war. She doesn’t know why she keeps count but she wakes up in the morning and adds another line to the toll like a prisoner in a holding cell. (Maybe it’s because she feels trapped in a tunnel that doesn’t seem to end.)

The hospital is busy. Konoha is warm. Dango is sweet. Medical scrolls are expensive. Children are growing. These are facts that are as absolute as the beginning of time.

The facts are: Konoha is warm and her boys are dead. 

There’s no arguing with it, or proving it false, or looking into extra considerations, exceptions to the rule. Her boys have been dead for five years, three months, and twenty days.

_(Because in the valley where Hashirama and Madara fought - their statues proud, a timeless reminder of the strength of power - is where her best friends decided to die.)_

Naruto and Sasuke aren’t moving, aren’t breathing, rotting beneath the headstone while Sakura continues to exist. (This is a fact. One she has to swallow every single day.)

She misses them. (This, she tells herself, is only a feeling. It can be discarded.) She misses them so much it makes her knees ache, her chest constrict, her throat heavy. She feels it in her body, as if their absence is like the absence of water, and what’s lacking is making itself known through pain. She feels it when she sees blond hair in the street, when she passes by Ayame, when she watches Kakashi-sensei’s face shaped on the mountain. She feels it when she buys tomatoes, when she hears a mutter of _‘idiot’,_ when she walks by the district full of ghosts.

She used to be seventeen and invincible, two powerhouses by her side. They seemed too big then, too large, too real to be sucked in by something as puny as death. They had too strong a hold on her life that after they left, she couldn’t help but fall apart.

They liked leaving her behind, she muses as she watches the red lights start hanging up the streets. They left her when she was twelve. She was too much of a fool to believe they were on equal footing when they weren’t. Naruto had his shadow clones, Sasuke had his fireball, she had a kunai she held with wet palms. Then they set out when they were thirteen with a strike to the neck and a promise of getting stronger. 

Just when she thought she finally caught up, they went away one last time. 

Leaving is constant, death is final. 

There is no returning from it. Only the living suffer after the deceased have closed their eyes. 

She wonders if they suffered in those last moments. Laying down in the rubble, soaked in their own blood, a gaping hole where their arms were supposed to be. They didn’t say anything then. No words were needed. They were still Team Seven, after all. Sakura pleaded with all the gods, she would’ve done anything, everything to save them. But the damage was too severe. They’d been bleeding out in those crucial minutes that took her to arrive. 

She watches little children chase each other in the street, their laughs echoing in their wake. They would never know Uzumaki Naruto who would’ve become Hokage, or Uchiha Sasuke who would’ve wielded the most powerful eyes. 

She traces the steps she’s been taking for five years, not bothering to change out of her jounin uniform. Katana strapped to her back and the swirling charm she nicked from the jumpsuit sleeve swinging by her hip.

It’s gotten better now, she likes to make herself believe. She keeps them with her. It wasn’t like the first year when she barely slept, barely ate. Kakashi looked at her like she was about to die too. 

There is a gaping hole in her body - much like the ones in theirs - that used to be where she kept them. She doesn’t understand how Tsunade can still stand, can still face herself everyday. Losing her brother, then her love, then Jiraiya. Sakura laughs. Losing Naruto… losing Naruto might’ve been the final straw for her. The necklace Naruto wore underneath that jumpsuit is now back on its owner’s neck, lying between the mountains of her chest. She staked it all on him more than anyone else. He leaned on her and she believed in him. To watch a dream die over and over again, Sakura doesn’t blame her for leaving. Sakura never saw her mentor's tears, never heard her sobs, but she saw how _hopeless_ Tsunade felt. That was even worse. 

She navigates through the memorial stones with an ease that comes from repetition. 

For two idiots who just wanted to be seen their entire lives, it’s a cruel joke that their graves never ran out of flowers. 

She sits in front of them like they are twelve and laughing instead of inanimate rocks that are the only physical reminder that they ever existed. 

“Hello,” she smiles because what else is there to say? 

Sakura misses them the most when she allows herself to think about a world with her team still in it. They will set up tradition, she decides during the nights when her musings take her far. They will eat ramen on Wednesdays if they are free. If they aren’t then they will be because Naruto will drag them anyway. They’ll prohibit him from eating it the rest of the week. He’ll never stop yapping, but he’ll still live by the negotiation faithfully. She’ll tell him it’s for his own good if he doesn’t want to die before reaching fifty. 

Sasuke will be home. They’ll catch up, get him out of trouble, tell him he’s stuck with them whether he likes it or not even though he already knows.

They were seventeen and invincible. She is twenty-two and alone. She eats ramen with an empty barstool on each side.

They were too young. Far too young. It’s a thing to say in tragedies like this, but when she thinks about what they could’ve done after, she can’t help but agree. 

_I miss you,_ she says in her head, hoping they can hear her. The high ranking officials see it as a loss, but whatever sympathies they have for a tag team that was as unprecedented as Naruto and Sasuke, Sakura doesn’t care. She just misses her best friends. She misses their stupidity, their blockheaded arguments, their stubborn streaks. She misses a childhood that she won’t get to live again. 

It’s been a while since she’s been here. The new council keeps her occupied. But some days are worse than others. Especially when the first thing she saw when she left her house was Ino sandwiched between Shikamaru and Choji. Jealousy gripped her throat so hard that shame followed soon after.

“I hate,” she starts. _I hate that I’m growing old without you two. I hate that I have to face it all alone. I hate sitting at Ichiraku, forgetting that it won’t be Naruto’s treat. I hate that my hair is getting past my shoulders and all I can think about is the childish rumor that spread in the Academy. I hate that Ino has Choji and Shikamaru, Hinata has Kiba and Shino, Tenten has Lee, and I’m all alone. I hate that I have to live in a world without you two in it._ “I hate you two.”

She glances up, hastily wiping tears away from her face. She knows that spike of chakra from anywhere. “Does it ever get better?” She asks. 

“We have to live with ourselves either way.” He stands beside her.

“No work?” She asks, running her eyes through the stones. _Uzumaki Naruto… Uchiha Sasuke…_

“I wasn’t feeling very well. It isn’t healthy to work too much, you know.”

“You must be in top shape.”

“Always my brightest student.”

“You know, Kaka-sensei,” she whispers. “It’s just you and me.”

He nods. Her words ring too true to be comfortable. “It’s just you and me, kid.” He sighs. One that’s been his hallmark since the beginning of time. “I’m off then. So much to do…”

“Go on ahead. I’ll stay for a while.”

He makes a move to go. As he’s about to step out of earshot, he pauses. “They would’ve been proud of you. They wouldn’t want you to be sad.”

“No,” Sakura smiles. “They wouldn’t want that.”

If there were things she forgot along the way of growing old without them it would be the way Sasuke’s eyes were shaped (she is fifty-three, a sudden jolt of realization of what was lost), Naruto's _dattebayo_ (this… this is gradual; this is from years of absence, years when there is nothing there to remind her) but she will never forget that they wanted her to be happy. 

She will recall her best friends with fondness, though some blanks are wide and some details are missing, but now she is twenty-two, it’s been five years, three months, and twenty days since her boys died, and she still expects them to be there when she turns a corner. As Konoha is warm, Naruto and Sasuke’s graves are cold.


End file.
